By
Erich Vieth on September 16th, 2009
There’s a cool new grocery store in downtown St. Louis. Until the new Schnucks Culinaria opened up last month, there hadn’t been a full service grocery in downtown St. Louis for decades. It is an inviting and well-designed store. More than just a store too. It’s becoming a community gathering spot, where one can often hear live music and attend wine tastings. 
Into the middle of the fray comes this: The manager, who by all accounts is a terrific store manager, decided to display a one-foot-tall crucifix with a graphic image of a bloody Jesus high up on the wall behind the service counter. It is can be easily viewed by customers who are in the process of checking out.
This has brought some controversy, as reported by the local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. For those of us who have worked downtown for many years, this new store had instantly become “our” store, no matter who we were. But now it’s not quite “our” store unless we believe in the divinity of the dying Jesus.
As indicated by a Jewish customer:
“It would have been equally startling if it had been a Star of David or an emblem of another religion,” Weinstock said. “It’s grocery shopping, and it should be welcoming to all and exclude none.”
The manager, Tom Collora, is quoted as follows:
Collora says exclusion is not what he had in mind. The crucifix, he said, “is not meant to promote one faith over another. It’s just an opportunity to share a part of myself and my life with people I work hard to serve every day.”
This controversy reminds me why the First Amendment is generally a good idea. Not that the First Amendment applies to a private grocery store (it clearly doesn’t), but exclusion of out-groups usually starts in subtle ways. Not that the manager is trying to exclude customers. That does not appear to be his conscious intention. But the effect of displaying any badges of in-group membership announces: this is a place for people like the people who are displaying the image. It draws a distinction between those who are Catholic and all of those (including many types of Christians) who don’t believe it’s proper to display a graphically depicted murder in an otherwise non-threatening public place. From the viewpoint of many people, the prominently displayed crucifix says: “This is not really and truly a place for people like you, though you may enter here and shop.” In this way, it functions much like graffiti, suggesting group ownership of a location.
Though I don’t doubt that he is a competent store manager, I found the manager’s explanation disingenuous. If he were really simply trying to “share” a faith, he might want to open up that big wall for religious icons preferred by his other employees too. Maybe some of the employees are Scientologists, Buddhists and Muslims. Maybe the entire wall should be covered to accommodate all of the major faiths practiced by the customers who all simply want to “share.” But he is also disingenuous in another way: Certainly, the image of a bloody dying Jesus is meant to promote one faith over others.
Here’s another potential source of the disconnect between the manager and some of his customers: Over the years, Mr. Collora has probably become desensitized to the horrors of the
bloody image that he is displaying. That happens to all Catholics (including me, when I was forced to go to church as a boy). We lose the ability to be repulsed by the torture displayed the churches we regularly attend unless we consciously work hard to see the images of the bloody Jesus anew. Consider this: What would the store manager think if the Assistant Manager, who felt really strongly that the United States shouldn’t torture its prisoners, displayed one of the Abu Ghraib images next to the crucifix? I imagine that Mr. Collora would have a fit. “We can’t display graphic images of torture in our store! What are you thinking, man?”
